Energy balance and growth: experience in treating children with malnutrition.

If an analogy between growth failure in renal disease and chronic malnutrition exists, experience in the dietary management of severely malnourished children may be of relevance. For children with chronic malnutrition, the energy cost of weight gain is approximately 5 kcal/g, and the maintenance energy requirement is close to 1.5 times the basal metabolic rate. Infants fed proprietary formulas with vegetable oil added in order to increase energy density have increased their total energy intake. This increase has been of immense benefit in rehabilitating malnourished children and has resulted in rapid rates of weight gain.